Multi-channel video installation, 19 min, HD, color, 2014–2023
At the invitation of the MAH, and in resonance with the work of Ella Maillart, Pauline Julier delves into her own archives to redeploy one of her first films: La Disparition des Aïtus (2014). Almost ten years after the film was shot, we take a look at Tuvalu, a microstate in the South Pacific threatened with extinction by rising sea levels, which is now preparing to become the world’s first digital nation. According to Simon Kofe, Tuvalu’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, "replicating the nine small islands that make up the archipelago could ensure virtual continuity for the country. No matter what happens to the physical world, we will move to the Cloud", he said. The alternative of an existence in the Metaverse seems to be the desperate political outcome of the great silence of the international community. Drawing on an analogy between the disappearance of the country itself and that of the imaginations of its inhabitants, a fable as much as a metaphor for modernity unfolds, alongside a nocturnal tour of this island environment that is as paradisiacal as it is distressing. Through a forest of images, like an immersive installation of the film, extended and presented in fragments, the artist updates these issues that are more than ever contemporary.
Produced as part of the exhibition "ELLA MAILLART, ANNE-JULIE RACCOURSIER AND PAULINE JULIER" at the Musée Rath, curated by the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de Genève.
